Committed To Riding Their Bikes To Work, They Inspire Their Students To Give It A Try

Armand Saccomanno's commute starts in North Windham every day around 6:10 a.m.

He packs his gear bags with schoolwork, but instead of jumping into his car, he clicks his bike shoes onto the pedals of his trusty 1982 steel-framed Panasonic road bike – the "old jalopy" he calls it – and starts off on a 14-mile trek to E.O. Smith High School, where he teaches social studies.

Saccomanno, 40, has been biking to work for 11 years, rain or shine, in all seasons. On Friday, it was National Bike to Work Day, so he had some company. Saccomanno and another E.O. Smith social studies teacher, Shawn Santasiere, started a Bike to School week five years ago. Earlier last week, participation was dampened a bit by the rain, but 40 student cyclists checked in at the breakfast table set up in the parking lot next to the school early Friday morning. There were 137 who biked to school through the week.

"How was the ride?" Santasiere asked some students who pulled up to the curb and perused the cereal, bagels and other offerings.

Cold, they said.

It was a little chilly, but quickly warmed up. Santasiere, who bikes five miles to work most days from his home in Storrs, got there early to set up. The food was provided by a grant from the E.O. Smith Foundation. The kids sat on the curb and ate and talked. One, Jesse Lusa, had biked an impressive 20 miles from Willington. Another, Carolyn Brown, traveled seven miles, but it was via hilly Mansfield City Road. A couple other faculty members, including science teacher Julia Sherman and social worker Chuck Leavens, also made the morning trek by bike.

Saccomanno arrived a little later. He rides a circuitous route, taking the back roads through Chaplin, up some nice hills and finishes with a semi-torturous climb up Gurleyville Road in Storrs.

That wakes him up.

"I'm very alert in the morning," he said.

Formerly a dedicated runner, Saccomanno finished five marathons, including one in a not-so-shabby 2-hour, 47-minute personal best. But nagging injuries began to bother him and he started searching for another form of exercise. One day in 1997, his Achilles' tendon aching, he went into the cellar, found his bike, cleaned the chain, pumped up the tires, went for a ride and thought, "This is fun." That fall, he ran his last marathon and became a full-time cyclist. By 2001, he was biking to school every day.

"I did a study on how much I save in terms of carbon emissions — it's about four tons a year of carbon dioxide emissions, greenhouse gas emissions," said Saccomanno, who bikes about 9,000 miles a year, including 6,000 commuting.

He also saves about $6,000 annually by not commuting to work with a car. In fact, he and his wife, who have two young children, have had only one car for the past three years.

"When we had two [cars], I realized at one point that it had been six weeks or something that I had put gas in the tank," he said.

Over the winter, he hitched a ride with a colleague only three times when it was too treacherous to ride. Even during the snowy winter of 2010, he missed only seven days on the bike.

Santasiere used to ride 13 ½ miles from Columbia between one to three days a week on his mountain bike but when he moved to Storrs, he began to commute by bicycle every day.

Unlike Saccomanno, he is still more of a runner than a cyclist.

"I still don't consider myself a cyclist," he said. "I just consider myself somebody who rides to work. [Saccomanno]'s the real deal. He's a warrior."

The best part about the week, the teachers said, is that from now until the end of the school year, some of the students will continue riding their bikes to school. Maybe they will have to get up a little earlier, pack their backpacks lighter or not get a chance to sleep on the bus, but they will arrive at school alert, awake, ready to go.

"Riding a bike is fun," Saccomanno said. "I know that's a matter of opinion, but it really is — just the way you feel when you get here. By the time 7 in the morning rolls around, I've already accomplished something. And the way I've accomplished this is by also getting to work — I've managed to combine it.

"When you're riding a bike, you feel very liberated. I don't feel like I'm relying on some oil company to get oil from the Middle East so I can drive to work. I feel like I'm being more self-sufficient."